Rúben Amorim: The Second Best Manager in Portugal?

I recently appeared on an episode of the new Distance Covered podcast, in which host Josh Williams and I discussed how much difference managers make to the success or failure of a team. There have been various studies which have concluded that the answer is ‘not much’, with the financial side of the game always likely to carry a far greater impact.

When it comes to Liverpool, they need a man who can get more than expected from the nickels and dimes. Such things are always relative, though.

Rúben Amorim is well placed to win a second Primeira Liga crown with the club which reportedly has the third highest wage bill in Portugal. Sporting CP’s salary outlay is less than half of Benfica’s, so to oust the defending champions would be a decent achievement.

But then Bayer Leverkusen are one place lower in the Bundesliga pecking order for wages, with a salary bill only a quarter of that splashed out by Bayern Munich. It’s a pity Xabi Alonso is staying put, isn’t it?

And what about Roberto De Zerbi, who took Brighton from second bottom in the salary table to sixth in the Premier League last season? Now that’s what I call Moneyball (as the tabloids would incorrectly use the term, at least).

Anyway, with Alonso off the table, Amorim is now favourite with bookmakers to get the gig. As I’ve seen far less of his side than Brighton, I thought I’d dig into a few numbers.

(Josh has already done this in detail for Distance Covered - do check it out - but there’s something which caught my eye that I wanted to share).

Sporting’s expected points tallies from Amorim’s four full seasons at the helm make for very interesting reading, and feed into the discussion mentioned at the top of the page. I’ve never been a fan of Understat’s xP (not that they cover Portugal), as they don’t add up; the recent match between Liverpool and Brighton ended 2.83-0.11 on expected points, leaving 0.06 to the ether.

To my mind, it makes more sense to declare a team the expected winner of a match if they have over 0.4 xG more than their opponents. This means you get a realistic number of draws across a league season, and as a non-penalty big chance is worth a shade under 0.4 expected goals, it feels a fair margin at which to declare a victor.

2023/24 is Amorim’s fourth full season with Sporting CP. In each of them, his side has been ranked second for xPts using the above method. Here are their expected results.

One thing stands out a mile: when they have got more points than they deserved, they won (or are leading) the league, but underachievement on this front drags them down the table.

The margin between expected and actual goal difference adds further meat to this bone. Sporting were seven up on their xGD in 2020/21, winning the league, then only +1.6 and second the following season. They were below by 2.5 last season and took fourth spot but have rebounded with a scarcely believable +14.1 in 2023/24.

‘A-ha,’ cry the sceptics, ‘he’s a fraud who got lucky this season.’ Not really, as the fact Sporting are only two points above expectation shows. This table shows their results for 2023/24 along with the xG figures from FBRef.

They’ve deserved to win most of the games, and the fact they’ve scored a lot more goals than their chances merited has merely made some fixtures more comfortable on the score line. Games 18 to 20 saw them score 18 goals against Vizela, Casa Pia and Braga from 9.4 expected, but they still unquestionably deserved to win all three matches.

Back to Expected Points. They imply that Sporting have consistently been the second best team in Portugal over the last four years. Does that make Amorim the Primeira Liga’s second best manager? If you’re a Liverpool fan, you wouldn’t say Jürgen Klopp was second best in the Premier League simply because Manchester City always top the underlying numbers, would you?

Let’s see who has bested Sporting for expected points in the each of the last four campaigns.

There are two clubs bigger than Sporting in Portugal but neither has been consistently better since the summer of 2020. Amorim’s boys have been seven xPts ahead of Benfica and eight in front of Porto across the previous 129 match weeks, and Sporting have a game in hand on both too.

Small under- or over-performances here and there have left Amorim with one, likely two, league titles, yet he could have had none or four without much else being different. Managers, eh? Who needs ‘em?

Liverpool. And they could do a lot worse than hiring Rúben Amorim.